Loading: Halo 3 Out Today, Nintendo Blogger Gets Fired

So Halo 3 arrived at my house on Saturday. It was the Limited Edition and I was stoked…until I heard something rattling about within the tin. BOTH the discs had come loose and been bouncing about, presumably for the whole ride from Washington to New York. Both discs were, naturally, scratched to shit. Lucky for Microsoft, my wrath was not necessary, as, after popping the game into my Xbox, it seemed to work just fine. Phew. By Sunday evening I had beaten Halo 3. I couldn’t stop. I HAD to see it to the end, which was both confusing and also managed to give a sense of semi-closure (as predicted and without giving anything away, Halo 3 totally leaves the door open for Halo 4. Duh.)

First of all, let me say that, as impressed as I was with Bioshock’s graphics last month, I am absolutely inspired by Halo 3’s look. Yes, all the Halos have looked relatively great, and this is essentially just a new paint job, but 3 had me stopping to admire scratches on a tank and the grass on hillside. The amount of detail is staggering, and the levels are often tremendous in size and nothing short of amazing.

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And, while it may sound disappointing that Halo can be beaten in only a day (on Heroic), the reality is that there is so much going on in this game that the story-mode–still somewhat insane, yet compelling enough that I will gladly be playing through on the super-hard “legendary” mode this week–is really only a small part of what will make me and millions of others keep at this game for the next year. Or three.

Multiplayer is really what most people play this game for, and Bungie have stepped shit up this time.

The “Forge” map-editor is a wild new addition that doesn’t really let you alter the map geography, but lets you alter what and where certain things are within the map, as well as what it is you can do in the map–like play “baseball” with gravity hammers and explosive projectiles. Come the fuck on! That’s awesome!

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Then there is the ability to record your matches (the game does this automatically on campaign mode as well) and play them back, move the camera around, take movies, take screenshots, send them to friends, etc.

Add this to the various other modes and inevitable downloadable content that we’re guessing will drop around Christmas-ish, and you have an exemplary sci-fi game that is worth far more than what you paid for it. Which in our case was nothing, so in Vegas terms we are way up.

If we had any complaints it would be that the story was, as we mentioned, still a bit nonsensical, the vehicle gameplay wasn’t quite as satisfying as it had seemed previously (and we never once got to pilot a banshee. Did I just miss it somewhere?), and weapons seemed a little weak this time around–but that is perhaps because we were on a higher difficulty. Still, I feel the game should have accounted for that and made shooting a Brute point-blank in the face with shotgun feel like I had done just that instead of having him punch me right after. Meh.

But these are all mild complaints. The shittiest parts of Halo 3 are still better than 99% of everything else out there. If you have an Xbox 360 then you should have Halo 3. My gamer tag is Blacknacht. Come get some bitches.

Nintendo Blogger Fired For Being Idiot

A brazen 23-year old bloggerette, who also worked for Nintendo, by the name of Jessica Zenner, was recently canned by the Big N for saying the following on her personal blog:

"One plus about working with [a] hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy [woman] is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily," Zenner writes. "My gut tells me that this woman hasn't been fucked in years."

Not much to say about this one other than:

"STOP USING YOUR PERSONAL WEBPAGES TO TALK SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE THAT PAY YOU MONEY YOU STUPID FUCKING DICKS!!"

Lord knows I’ve badmouthed previous employers plenty but I never plastered it on the internet for all to see. Do people really think they are that untouchable these days? Christ!